Ben Brown, Chief Executive of Shopwave - Shares Insights

Our ‘Profile: A Day in the Life of’ feature takes a look at some of the global professionals working across performance marketing. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the flourishing industry. This week we head to London to meet the founder and CEO of Shopwave, Ben Brown.

What are the company’s unique selling points?

1/5 the cost of implementing an incumbent solution, using standardised off the shelf hardware.

Flexible - An open OAUTH2 API enabling the integration of third party apps and sharing of real-time data where our competitors have a walled garden.

Beautiful and space saving - We use an iPad where incumbents provide bulky, unattractive hardware.

Within the last six months/year, what stands out as the company’s major milestones?

Raising £340,000 of new investment via Crowdcube.

Launching our API and developer playground. We aim to develop this to become an app store for third party developers who wish to integrate with Shopwave, enabling connected, omni-channel retail.

Multiple new app releases and features based on feedback and ideas from our own customer base.

Duration in current role:

14 months.

Where are you based?

London.

Previous performance marketing-related companies you have worked at:

I was CEO and co-founder at VouChaCha which was acquired by Monitise PLC as part of Markomedia. We powered mobile Apps inc. Myvouchercodes, lastminute.com, Orange & EE, and had relationships with over a thousand merchants.

Lloyds Banking Group.

Affiliate Window.

Expedia.

What are your main job responsibilities?

As CEO my responsibilities include defining the overall vision and strategy at Shopwave and communicating it to our stakeholders, recruiting and retaining the very best talent and making sure there is money in the bank.

Take us through what you get up to on a typical working Monday:

There is no typical Monday for the average startup CEO but if I can I will always try to visit one of our customers for breakfast and say hello. We work some amazing places to eat, so it’s always great to go visit! I like to check in and hear their feedback and ideas in person.

I also keep a constant eye on our company dashboard which includes data from Shopwave, Google Analytics, Adwords, Jira, our CRM and project management tools. This provides a fantastic insight into the health of our company and provides the data I need to ensure we achieve our targets.

What top three websites can you be found browsing during your lunch hour?

I try to make time to sit down with my team and hear their ideas over lunch, or play table tennis, rather than browse the web during my lunch hour.

If I’m viewing web content for entertainment it will usually be via Flipboard when I’m stuck in a queue or on the train.

What are your top three tips for someone looking to get their hands on a job like yours?